Hayden Panettiere was still years away from elementary school when her mother began training her in one of acting’s most demanding skills: producing tears on cue.
Lesley Vogel, an actress who also became her daughter’s manager and one-on-one acting coach, has opened up about the rigorous methods she used to prepare Panettiere for the punishing pace of daytime television. The routine included relentless script practice until the lines were memorized, along with emotional exercises designed to help the young performer cry whenever a scene required it.
“I had already taught her, believe it or not, at four years old, she could trigger tears,” Vogel told Our News Outlet in an exclusive interview.
For a child actor stepping into the fast-moving soap opera world, the skill proved invaluable. Performers could be expected to handle as many as 50 pages of dialogue in a single day, and Panettiere’s early discipline helped propel her into the upper tier of child soap stars during the 1990s.
In her memoir, This is Me: A Reckoning, published in May, Panettiere described herself as a “little soldier” during those formative years in front of the camera. She was just four years old when she landed the role of little Sarah Roberts on ABC’s long-running daytime drama One Life to Live.
Panettiere died of a suspected drug overdose in Greenville, South Carolina, on August 16.
Hayden Panettiere’s mother, Lesley Vogel, has detailed the techniques that helped turn her daughter into a child star by the age of four in an exclusive interview with Our News Outlet
Panettiere, who died of a suspected drug overdose on August 16, had written candidly about the pressures and complications of growing up in the spotlight in her memoir released earlier this year
Vogel, who had a complicated relationship with her daughter and was estranged from her at the time of her death, has been slammed by media figures including Gayle King and Megyn Kelly for forcing Panettiere into show business too early.
By the time she was eight years old and had landed the recurring role of Lizzie Spaulding on CBS soap opera Guiding Light, Vogel’s coaching of Hayden to be able to wail on demand proved truly fruitful.
One pivotal scene involved Panettiere’s screen mother, played by Beth Chamberlin, being injured in a car accident.
‘This was my big moment,’ Panettiere wrote in her memoir. ‘A bloody suicidal mom in a cold, sterile place about to be wheeled off to God knows where… that was enough to make any kid upset.’
By then, Vogel said, Panettiere was an old hand at crying on command.
‘I coached her before that scene, and boy, she came in, did an amazing job to the point where not just the cast came over to me, but the producers came down on set and said, “Oh my God, oh my God.”‘
Panettiere was just four years old when she landed a role on ABC soap opera One Life to Live (pictured)
It was her performance and stunning ability to cry on cue during dramatic scenes that cemented her place on CBS soap Guiding Light at the age of eight, alongside Beth Chamberlin, left, Grant Aleksander, top, and Tina Sloan
The performance helped cement Panettiere’s place on the show, according to Vogel.
Not long after that scene, the character of Lizzie Spaulding evolved into a full-time contract role.
‘She was astonishing,’ Chamberlin told Our News Outlet. ‘Memorizing all those lines was the least of it.
‘She knew how to bring those words to life in an emotional arc that adult actors often struggle with. I don’t think I even remember her forgetting a line.’
But the cost of that early success could be high, according to what Hayden wrote in her memoir.
She often thought of her beloved pet guinea pig, Christopher Robin the Third, when trying to conjure up tears for emotional scenes like the one with Chamberlin.
Her former co-stars recalled her acting ability at such a young age as ‘astonishing’
Vogel admitted that other parents noticed that, with her mother as her acting coach, Panettiere had one advantage most aspiring child actors did not
‘I adored Christopher Robin the Third,’ she wrote. ‘I held in my tears and imagined his funeral. I’d make a little headstone for him and bury him under a tree in our yard.’
‘I felt the pressure inside me building and the tears welling up. Hold it in Hayden, hold it in.
‘When I felt I was about to pop, I let loose and turned it on, just like Mom had taught me to do.’
Vogel, herself an actress, told Our News Outlet that early on, one of the main stars on ‘Guiding Light’ approached her after watching Panettiere perform.
‘She came up to me and said, “You know this child can act”,’ Vogel recalled.
Vogel initially brushed off the compliment, telling herself: ‘I’m not that mom you have to compliment.’
But the actress persisted.
‘She said, ‘No, Lesley, I’m serious.’ And I was like, okay.’
Vogel admitted that other parents noticed that Panettiere had one advantage most aspiring child actors did not: her mother was her private acting coach.
She said mothers of other young performers would call Panettiere’s agency, CESD, asking whether they could speak to her about how she coached her daughter.
At other times, parents complained that Panettiere had an unfair advantage, she said.
Yet Vogel insists coaching alone cannot explain what Panettiere could do.
Panettiere once landed a television pilot and flew to California for the table read, despite being so young she could not yet read.
About 30 minutes before the session, Vogel recalled, a panicked producer suddenly realized the problem.
‘Oh my God, oh my God! I just realized Hayden can’t read. How’s she going to do this?’ Vogel recalled the producer saying.
‘I just looked at the producer. I said, “Oh, we’ve got this,” because we had studied it and she had memorized it.’
Vogel used her finger to help her daughter keep her place on the page during the table read, but Panettiere had already memorized the script.
‘They were dumbfounded,’ Vogel said. ‘When you have a four-year-old who can deliver lines, hit all her spots, hit all her cues, and then come off and be a normal four-year-old – that’s a gift.’
Vogel has defended her decision to put Hayden into show business when she was only 11 months old. The late actress is pictured in one of her child television roles in 1999
Panettiere later acknowledged the price she paid for her acting skills as a kid, and how her early career affected her as an adult
It may have been a gift – and Panettiere both trashes and celebrates her early career in her book.
But she is clear that she paid a big price for her acting skills as a kid.
‘Directors, fans and Mom praised me endlessly for my over-the-top dramatic responses,’ Panettiere wrote in her memoir.
‘Subconsciously I began to associate catastrophe with adoration; people loved me because make-believe bad things happened to me.’
‘Grown-ups gave me positive attention when – as an actor – I failed, got sick, screamed and cried, grieved and suffered.
‘Reality merged with my imagination and burrowed into my core memories, where all my shame and trauma lived.
Vogel insisted she never stopped trying to protect her daughter, despite their complicated relationship
Panettiere, right, and James Marsden greet audience members during the 21st Annual Kids’ Choice Awards in Los Angeles in 2008
‘Is it any wonder why I’ve faced so many real struggles in my life? I’ve often wondered whether – unintentionally – I’ve brought on traumas because I’m wired to think they’re good for me.’
Panettiere’s account of growing up in Hollywood became considerably darker in her memoir, including her claim that she was given ‘pep pills’ at 15 before red carpet appearances.
Vogel says she had no knowledge of anyone giving her teenage daughter such pills – and questions whether Panettiere’s recollection was accurate.
‘I have heard this before, and I know who her publicist was,’ Vogel said. ‘Her publicist was not perfect, but I never knew anything about her doing that.’
Vogel said the claim surprised her because she remained closely involved in Panettiere’s career at that age.
Vogel stressed that Panettiere never told her directly that she had been given the pills.
Lesley Vogel and ex-husband Skip Panettiere are now the bereaved parents of two children, Hayden and younger brother Jansen, who died in 2023 at the age of 28
The actress in her memoir claimed she was given ‘pep pills’ at 15 before red carpet appearances
‘She never said that to me, but she told others that that’s what happened.’
Vogel, who was also portrayed as a hard-driving, demanding stage mother in Hayden’s memoir, said her relationship with her daughter was ‘complicated’ but she doesn’t deserve being trashed by people who have never met her, referring to criticism by Gayle King and Megyn Kelly.
‘I was very, very hurt and deeply disappointed in the lack of professionalism, the lack of compassion in slamming someone who’s lost two children, without even a modicum of consideration,’ she told Our News Outlet in an earlier interview.
Laura Bonarrigo, who was one of the stars of ‘One Life to Live’ when Hayden was part of the cast in the mid-1990s, said the seemingly glamorous world of child acting can mask an industry that is ‘relentless’ – and leave young performers struggling to figure out their identity out of the spotlight.
‘She was little, very little,’ she said of Hayden and other kid performers during her time on ‘One Life to Live.’
‘We would have known her on set as a beautiful little girl, been kind to her – all of them were very precocious. They were charming. They were lovely, all of them.’
Panettiere refers to being a ‘little soldier’ as a child actress in her memoir, This is Me: A Reckoning, published in May, just three months before her unexpected death
Bonarrigo, who now works as a certified life and divorce coach and counsels actors struggling with the pressures of the profession, said her own experience in soaps left her skeptical of any suggestion that life on a television set, however happy a particular child might appear, was simply fun.
For a child performer, she said, the pressure can be even more complicated because success and approval become tied to performing almost from the beginning.
‘The pressure to perform, to do your role, to look a certain way and to behave a certain way,’ she said.
‘The thing is, for a little girl, she has to perform,’ she said of Panettiere. ‘It might be a genuine part of her, and we’re going to give her credit. Let’s say it’s a genuine part of her.’
But, she added: ‘No three-year-old knows that she wants to get on stage and perform unless somebody has shown her this.’
‘She got rewarded for that because, right, monkey see, monkey do. She’s just a child.
‘She got rewarded for that. So she did more of it, and that’s the precociousness I’m talking about. That’s what I would witness in the kids.’
